(1) Field of the Invention:
This invention relates to multimedia systems hotlinking between media. More particularly, the invention relates to multimedia systems invoking one media from another by means of a hotlink or a program and action enablement.
(2) Background Discussion:
The context of the invention is the presentation of heterogeneous rich-media content to users over the Internet to communicate objects, ideas and solutions. The invention concerns the enablement of actions generically during the course of such presentations. Hotlinking from one presentation to another would be a familiar and specific example of such a capability. The problem of action enabling may be described as one of triggering actions on encountering actionable situations. The actionable situation would be a combination of spatio-temporal contexts in the presentation of media as well as user input and media player state events. The scope of the triggered actions includes not only switching presentation state or segment, but also bringing in new presentation content, changing the look-and-feel and even performing actions which are outside the scope of media itself such as enabling an e-business transaction.
The challenge is to build an apparatus for action enablement that facilitates the following:                1. A content creator's expression of his/her selection of actionable situations and associated actions, where both are picked from a set of possible expressions supplied as a standard offering with the framework or belong to enhancements to it.        2. A media type creator's ability to introduce his/her new actionable situations.        3. A media type creator's ability to provide functions that assist in the identification of actionable situations.        4. An application developer's ability to override the default functions that handle specific actions.        5. An application developer's ability to introduce his/her new actions.        